Woz’s editorial comment on Gray Powell, the engineer who left the iPhone prototype in the bar. Personally, I think it would be genius for Steve Jobs to invite Gray Powell up on stage for the phone rollout…
– Dave
Earlier this morning, got the letter below from the Apple Store. Looks like my iPad 3G is shipping soon. Yay!!! 
– Dave
————–
Sold-to address: David Mark
Date: 04/19/2010
Our order number: 71331xxxxx
PO number: xxxxxxxxxx
Web order number: W69xxxxxx
Apple customer no: 90xxxx
To Our Valued Apple Customer:
Thank you for your recent order of the magical and revolutionary
iPad 3G.
We would like to confirm that your order will be shipped in late
April as communicated at the time you placed your order. You will
receive a confirmation notice when your order has shipped.
You can get up-to-date information about your order, including
shipping status and tracking number, at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus
Thank you for choosing Apple.
Sincerely,
The Apple Store Team
HP recently posted the video below on their Voodoo Blog. To me, the video shows several things.
First and foremost, the video highlights the ubiquity of Flash on the web. As far as I know, Apple still has no plans to support Flash on iPad. I’ve always heard that this was due to bugginess in Flash, as well as Flash’s cost in battery life. On the Mac, battery life is less of an issue, and the Flash code is isolated from the main browser code. If Flash crashes, the browser notifies you of the crash and then restarts Flash. Apparently, either this is not possible in the iPhone OS browser, or the battery cost of Flash is just too great. The video points out that tablets like HP’s Slate are based on Windows 7 and get Flash support by default as part of the overall Windows 7 experience.
The video also highlights the basic differences between Apple and Windows 7 vendors like HP and Dell in their approach to the tablet market. As they did with smart phones, Microsoft’s partners are working with a scaled down version of the desktop operating system. A process or application you run on your desktop has at least a chance of working on the tablet. Certainly, the browser experience will be nearly identical. Apple’s core approach is different, as different as the toolboxes offered by Mac OS X and iPhone OS. The SDKs for both are quite similar, but there are a vast sea of differences. Clearly, there’s no simple way to port an application from one platform to the other.
The video also shows off the HP device, gives it a real chance to shine. And, in my opinion, this is where Apple really comes out ahead. HP’s Slate is thick and chunky. The iPad is graceful, subtle, elegant. And thin.
All that said, I think this is going to be a very interesting new phase in the evolution of computing. Will Apple force Flash to change or, perhaps, open the door so a Flash competitor can enter the market? Or will the ubiquity of Flash eventually force Apple to allow Flash to play under iPhone OS. Interesting, interesting times!
– Dave
Watch Stephen Colbert prepare to announce the first category on the Grammies broadcast. Brilliant!
– Dave
Yesterday was a huge day. Tons of activity, conversations with friends and colleagues about the iPad. SO much discussion. There are definitely flaws in the design. This post captures the biggest of them, I think:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/01/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad/
But though this post does point out a number of things that Apple could improve on (and I suspect they will, over time), bottom line, I think the post misses the bigger picture. Apple has created something new and incredibly useful. Right out of the gate, I can see two markets where the iPad can really shine.
The most obvious of these is the eBook market. Great for me, the avid reader, great for me, the writer, great for Apple’s shareholders. Though I am a big fan of the Kindle (do almost all my reading on one), the iPad definitely makes my Kindle look old and dingy. There has been an explosion of eBook readers over the past year, and the iPad just leaps over all of them, much as the iPhone did over its smartphone competitors. And books are typically more expensive than CDs (those round shiny things from the old days), so more revenue for Apple, less dead trees. And as an author, Apple gives me a much more efficient path to the marketplace. Win, Win, Win.
The less obvious, but no less important marketplace for the iPad is in health care. The iPad has an important role to play, putting the latest patient data in the hands of their doctors and nurses, ensuring that a patient’s history and current drug regimen is front and center. The iPad can add intelligence and rigor to that process, ensuring that a doctor doesn’t forget about a particularly subtle condition noted several years ago, or about a newly released drug interaction warning. This market is particularly underserved right now, and the iPad is stepping in at the perfect moment. The fact that it shares an OS with the iPhone and iPod touch means a wide range of choices for health care professionals.
There are many markets where the iPad will change the status quo. To me, focusing on perceived shortcomings of a device that has not even arrived is incredibly short-sighted. The iPad is a leap forward, no doubt in my mind. And I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
– Dave
This is a letter sent to Jeff LaMarche from the developer of the iSketch app. Nice story, wanted to share with you all…
– Dave
Dear Mr. Lamarche,
My name is Cameron Cohen and I am an eleven year old iPhone App Developer. Last year, I had an injury that restricted me from doing any physical activity that I enjoy. I had taken a few classes on programming c++ and Java so I was interested in computers. I had an iPod Touch and was very interested in it, so I decided to google, “How do I create an iPhone Application?” I watched Stanford University classes on ‘iTunes U’, watched all kinds of tutorials, and, almost every day, read your blog. Over the summer, I spent most of my time working on completing one full application. I worked on a painting/drawing application, because although there were many in the App Store already, I thought mine would be better. I submitted my application, “iSketch”, to Apple in November. As my app was waiting for approval by Apple, I had a thought on my mind. Inspired by the care I received at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, I decided to dedicate a portion of the proceeds from the sales of iSketch to purchase entertainment and electronic items for Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA’s Child Life/Child Development programs in Westwood and Santa Monica so that pre-teens and teens would have additional age-appropriate options available to them during their Hospital stays. I wanted to donate a portion of my sales, and I knew this was the way. Apple approved my app in early December, and, since then, my sales have been good, but I hope to accelerate them so that I can donate even more to the hospital. Thank you very much for reading this, and I was hoping that you could possibly put this or information about me on your blog. My email is ccctennis@aol.com, and my website is www.cccdevelopment-llc.com .
Sincerely,
Cameron Cohen
I am fascinated by Google’s Android platform. Android is an operating system that runs on top of the Linux kernel, meaning it is a Unix-type device, with all the good and bad associated with Unix. The Motorola Droid is one of a number of phones that use Android as their operating system. The majority of the Android source code has been released under the Apache License, meaning that you, as a user of an Android device, can make changes to the operating system that runs your device.
Here’s a picture of the Motorola Droid:
Personally, I love the look and feel of my iPhone. iPhone runs iPhone OS, built on top of Darwin, another open source Unix-derivative. But the two are like night and day. Apple controls everything about iPhone, from the hardware (no one else is allowed to run iPhone OS), to the apps (every app MUST go through the Apple vetting process and must be sold through Apple’s App Store) to the software development process (if you want to build an iPhone app, you must use Cocoa Touch and the public Cocoa Touch APIs).
Android is open, Apple is closed. With Android, I can login to the OS itself as root and customize the phone to my hearts content (thus, the term, Rooting the droid), though doing that is fraught with danger and will likely void the warranty.
I love the idea of the freedom that Android brings me. Love it! But I depend on my phone. I do not trust my coding skills enough to risk turning my phone into a brick. I know how to recover from a bricked iPhone. Some folks claim that hacking your Android phone can be unrecoverable. I find that hard to believe. But I do know this. I am quite glad to have Google and Apple in my life, and I’m glad to have the choice between the fit and finish of iPhone and the raw funky power of Google. I have Chrome and Safari both pulling active duty as browsers, each with their own strengths. Love having them both, glad to have the choice. I hope Apple and Google never become enemies…
– Dave
The first computer I ever owned (besides a computer I built from a kit when I was a kid) was an Apple IIe. That computer started my long, torrid love affair with Apple. The Apple IIe was a brilliant bit of engineering, and half the fun was peeking through memory, trying to figure out where all the cool stuff was hidden.
But before the Apple II series, there was the original, the Apple I, handcrafter by Woz and sold out of Steve Jobs’s parent’s garage for the most excellent price of $666.66. Really, that is the original price. For that price, you got a circuit board. You had to build a case, add a power supply, keyboard, and a TV. Here’s a picture from the Apple I wiki page:
Want to buy an original Apple I? You are in luck. There’s one for sale on eBay. It is billed as “perhaps the best condition, best documented Apple 1 in existence.” The listing is pretty interesting. If any of you rich folks who read this blog are thinking what to buy me for a holiday present, this may be the best gift a true Apple fanboy could ever receive!
Here’s the eBay listing. Happy bidding!
– Dave
My brother Stu turned me on to a terrific repository of live performances. While YouTube is a great place to find and watch videos of your favorite artists, Wolfgang’s Vault offers a slightly different and more focused experience. For starters, you can search for a specific artist, select from a list of concerts by that artist, then play the concert from a playlist that you can control, a la iTunes. Here’s a playlist from the Allman Brothers 1973 Winterland concert:
Even better, the Vault offers a download manager that will download concerts as live individual tracks and fold those tracks into your iTunes library for later consumption. There’s also a free iPhone app so you can bring this lovely stuff on the road with you. Thanks, Wolfgang…
– Dave
Bottom line, Google will offer free turn-by-turn directions for Android and third party phones like the iPhone. And that spells big trouble for dedicated device manufacturers such as Garmin and TomTom. In my opinion, they are toast. Might take a few years, but the days of specialty devices are quickly drawing to a close. And you can thanks Steve Jobs for his brilliant vision of a device that is incredibly easy to program and an App Store that makes the distribution of powerful apps easy as pie and enriching for the company.
Google’s turn-by-turn service will be free, and free is hard to compete with.
Here’s a nice article from the NYTimes that goes into detail. Kudos to my buddy Todd for bringing this to my attention…
– Dave
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